Islands on the screen, that is what we are.

Rating: 7/10 (22 July 2005)

The Island is a big budget summer blockbuster. Directed by Michael "Blow Stuff Up" Bay, the film performs well as exactly what it ought to be, a flashy action-filled popcorn flick. What the film does wrong is extend beyond that.
With a story loosely based on the venerable but poorly produced "The Clonus Horror" (check Mystery Science Theater 3000 if you're interested), The Island has an exceedingly interesting concept. We are presented with the life of Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor), a man living as a highly-monitored automaton in a facility chock full of similar automatons. We see the routine, the conformity, and the high orchestration that surrounds Six Echo and his peers in their controlled environment, a facility that is completely isolated from the outside world which has been contaminated by an unnamed illness. Every day (or week?), various inhabitants of this facility become winners of a lottery which carries as its prize a chance to be transported for life to The Island (applause), the last pathogen-free area left on earth, a true paradise. Following a mind-numbing routine, occasionally hobnobbing with his good friend Jordan Two Delta (the irrepressibly cute Scarlett Johannsen) while waiting for his chance to be transported to The Island (applause) should be enough to keep Six Echo happy, but from the beginning of the film on we see that he is not content and, in fact, is somewhat wary of his idyllic surroundings. Of course, his wariness is proved correct when he sneaks into a part of the facility he is not allowed to go to and sees horrors that he is not supposed to see, and so he must make a daring escape with Jordan Two Delta, who, coincidentally, has just won the lottery and is packing to leave for The Island (applause). They escape and eventually learn the horrifying truth: they are simply clones purchased by people in the real world as a form of insurance and a way to cheat death.
From this point on, this Michael Bay film becomes, well, a Michael Bay film. What was about to blossom into a fine, thoughtful sci-fi thriller instead explodes (quite literally) into a bloated action feature. Plot points are introduced when they are necessary to predicate another high-octane chase scene or tense shootout. So much of the potential built up by the film in its first part is squandered away in the second. Unfortunately, Michael Bay was given more movie than he knew what to do with, and so the relevance and poignancy that the film might once have been able to capture is suffocated by a string of bullets, explosions, and destroyed cars. This is indeed a great shame given the real chemistry and ability of McGregor and Johannsen. The films greatest strength is easily its stars, who pull off the interesting role of naive "strangers in a strange land" with aplomb. If nothing else, you are continually rooting for the beleaguered duo, and this makes the movie more than worth watching through its noisy phase.
The film is one that I would recommend despite its faults. It is one that is interesting (at least to a point), it contains some good suspense, good acting, and, yes, lots of glittering scenes of everything getting blow'd up. However, if you see the film, I do hope that you, like I, mourn the fact that it really could have been something more.